Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

It’s good to see the Brits being proactive in the web accessibility field. The draft accessibility standard - BS 8878 Web accessibility - was released on 1st December for comment and aims to provide guidance on accessibility, usability and user experience processes in relation to people with disabilities, rather than on technical and design issues.

BSI British Standards is inviting all interested parties, and in particular marketing professionals and disabled web users, to review and comment on the draft of a new standard on accessible websites. DPC BS 8878 Web accessibility – Building accessible experiences for disabled people – Code of Practice is applicable to all public and private organizations wishing to offer accessible, usable websites to their customers. […]

Based on PAS 78: 2006, Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites, DPC BS 8878 informs organizations of their legal responsibilities in relation to web accessibility, calling on them to appoint a specific person or department to oversee activity. […]

The draft BS 8878 Web accessibility standard is available for viewing and commenting until 31 January 2009 - note that (free) registration and login is required.

Article via The Web Standards Project

Just wanted to alert those of you living in Canberra - the next Canberra Web Standards Group meeting is happening tomorrow. You can check out more details at the website. It's free to come along plus you get afternoon tea! Yours truly will be one of the speakers tomorrow, speaking about accessibility in Government.

PS: Hey traceyleigh, I haven't forgotten about your email! I'll get back to you on that soonish...

Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

My thanks to Max Design for highlighting the recent court ruling in California regarding the accessibility of Target Corporation’s website.

A federal district court judge issued two landmark decisions on the 2nd of October in a nationwide class action against Target Corporation.

The first decision involved the court certifying the case as a class action on behalf of blind Internet users throughout the country under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In addition to violating the ADA, the suit charges that Target has also violated two Californian civil rights statutes: the California Unruh Civil Rights Act and the California Disabled Persons Act.

In the second decision, the court stated that websites such as target.com are required by California law to be accessible.

For more information:

• Court Ruling Says California Disabled Rights Law Applies to the Web
• Blind patrons sue Target for site inaccessibility
• Judge allows class action against Target Web site

This is a step in the right direction, although it’s sad that it has to get to this stage before action is taken by the big corporations. Remember, accessibility is best done proactively - not reactively.

Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

Meet Glenda Watson Hyatt - she is an author, blogger, podcaster and she runs her own accessibility business called Soaring Eagle Communications in Canada. By the way, she has cerebral palsy.

Glenda shares her life story in her book I’ll Do It Myself to show others that cerebral palsy is not a death sentence, but rather a life sentence. Having previously visited Australia where she chatted with Jacqui Dalling at her blog Terrible Palsy, Glenda is back in the land down under. As part of her virtual book tour, she answers my questions about living with cerebral palsy and web accessibility.

Starting at the beginning…You mentioned being integrated into a regular classroom when going through school, plus going on to earn the highest award in Girl Guides, the Outstanding Junior Student Award and a gold medal in horseback riding! What was it like going through “mainstream” school with cerebral palsy?

To be honest, I preferred regular class to special ed class. For the most, I felt part of the group, albeit the fairly quiet part. I think I was challenged more and more was expected from me. I’ve probably accomplished much by being mainstreamed than I would have by staying in special education.

You recently coined a neat phrase - “Disability 2.0 - Nothing about us without us”. Are you able to expand on what you mean by this?

So many decisions, policies and such are made that affect people with disabilities, yet we are not part of the process. Some of these decisions and policies are absolutely ridiculous, yet we need to abide by them to get the services we truly need. By Disability 2.0, I mean a greater emphasis on self-determination – on people with disabilities being actively and equally involved in the decision-making process, and being present when information regarding them is shared and discussed.

It’s amazing reading about using your left thumb to type. Do you use a standard keyboard to type and navigate around websites? Are there any other technologies that you may use?

Yes, I plunk away at on a standard keyboard with only my left thumb; my four fingers glide along the top of the keyboard to steady my unsteady hand. However, it is becoming more difficult to find keyboards without an extra row of keys along the top.

In place of a mouse, I use a Traxsys (formerly Penny + Giles) joystick. Definitely not an inexpensive alternative at approximately $700 Canadian. OUCH! But I have much better control with the joystick than with the mouse. With the mouse, one involuntary or jerky hand movement and the mouse pointer goes flying across the screen. How frustrating!

I also use EZ Keys software for word prediction and abbreviation expansion. As I begin typing, the six most frequently used words starting with those letters appear in a small blue box on the screen. Different words appear as I continue typing. When the word I want appears, I simply hit the corresponding number and the computer completes the word. It does save me quite a few keystrokes! Although, even with this handy software, I still only type approximately ten or twelve words a minute, give or take.

Communication has always been a key message in your blog. With web 2.0 bringing new and fascinating ways of interacting with people around the globe, what are some of the key opportunities and challenges that you have faced with web 2.0 technologies?

These technologies have expanded the ways I can interact with people. The new opportunities to connect with people are truly amazing! I am eagerly waiting time to explore Second Life and to see what it is all about.

However, I am reluctant to fully embrace some of these technologies because they aren’t accessible to people with some types of disabilities and, if my business is about web accessibility, I feel I need to walk the talk as much as possible.

It has been interesting reading about your accessibility work for the Canadian Government and encouraging to see the growing awareness of accessibility and the W3C WCAG 1.0 in both the government and private sectors. To some extent, there seems to be a perception that web accessibility is mainly for people with visual disabilities. Developing websites for people with motor related disabilities is not often covered to the same depth as say, visual disabilities. Have you got any tips for our readers on some things to consider when developing websites for people with motor disabilities?

I agree that there is a misperception that web accessibility is mainly for people with sight impairments, and the barrier facing people with other disabilities are discounted. For me with limited hand function, I find those pop-out menus difficult to navigate – they either disappear before I can click or I end up clicking the wrong link and going somewhere I didn’t want to go. It would help if those menus were keyboard navigable so that I could tab through the links if necessary. Equally frustrating are tiny clickable areas; redundant text links are helpful. Also, timed tasks are some times difficult for me to complete before the session times out. A way to increase time would be appreciated.

Many thanks to Glenda for taking the time to satisfy my curiosity and for the opportunity to be part of her Summer Sojourn virtual book tour. Don’t forget to check out her Do It Myself blog where you can read and purchase her inspiring autobiography I’ll Do It Myself You can also help out by voting for Glenda in the “blog for a year” competition.

Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

After nearly missing my flight this morning, thanks to Canberra Cabs, I’ve learned a few valuable lessons:

1. Do not book a Canberra Cab using their online form - the cab will never arrive (discovered this one through my hubby, which was also verified by Russel)
2. Do not ring up and book a cab for the future (i.e. at least a day ahead) - that cab will never arrive either
3. What ever time you’ve allocated for the cab to arrive - give yourself at least another half an hour on top of that

So after two phone calls this morning, and a lot of panic attacks, a cab finally showed up. The driver had to significantly speed along the highway to get me to the airport so I could just make it on the plane. The passengers were already boarding when I made it to the airport. I’m entirely grateful to Qantas for their fairly usable self check-in system - I managed to check in for my flight (including my return flight) in under a minute. It took longer going through security (my shoes set off the metal detector) but I finally made it. I was one of the last few passengers on the plane, but I made it!!!

We (Russ and myself) visited both offices in Sydney to conduct our accessibility testing. Discovered lots of interesting stuff about various disabilities, particularly, Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) /Occupational overuse syndrome (OOS). It was great to get verification about the issues we thought were occurring, and very importantly, to start building up the relationships with our users of assistive technologies.

A piece of learning from the last few years is that, like usability evaluations, you have to consider the context of the user in terms of their environment, their experience levels (of the assistive tool as well as of the application), the amount of training they have received, whether they undertake other training, the frequency of that training, and the work culture.

It is ideal to conduct the accessibility evaluation with a range of users across different experience levels, and across the different assistive tools. It is also important to note that when analysing the feedback received from the users of assistive technologies, it should be balanced with the factors mentioned in the previous paragraph. For example, a user may have been using an assistive tool for many years, but if they were not given the opportunity to do much training (whether it is self training or through a trainer), their experience levels may not match another person with the same number of years experience who had more opportunity to get more familiar with their assistive tool.

I could go on, but ironically enough, my own RSI is playing up…..

Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

The GNOME Project has released Orca - a screen reader with other cool sounding features - as part of the release of version 2.16 of their popular Unix desktop environment. This piece of assistive technology is not just a screen reader. It also makes use of braille and screen magnification.
I need to find some time to have a play and report back about it.

• Andrew Arch from Vision Australia


• Paul Bohman and Shane Anderson from WebAIM in USA


• Helle Bjarnø from Videncenter for Synshandicap in Denmark


• Shawn Henry from the World Wide Web Consortium in USA


• Charles McCathieNevile from Opera in Norway


• Russ Weakley and Roger Hudson from Web Standards Group

View this post at www.ruthellison.com

View this post at www.ruthellison.com

With numerous people using banking online services, usability and accessibility becomes an even more important consideration. The question still lies in whether these banking services are more accessible to people with disabilities. Acting Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Sev Ozdowski, released a report on 7 July 2005, which looked at the accessibility of the banking services.

The report also links to industry standards on accessible ATMs, Internet, EFTPOS and telephone services, which were released in April 2002.

While we're on the subject of banking, National has recently released their new security measure. It will be interesting to see if this idea gets taken up by the other Australian institution......